One way that a wireless cellular service provider can improve the coverage provided by a base station or group of base stations is by using a distributed antenna system (DAS). A DAS typically comprises one or more master units and one or more remote units that are communicatively coupled to the master units. One type of DAS is an analog DAS, in which DAS traffic is distributed between the master units and the remote units in analog form. Another type of DAS is a digital DAS, in which DAS traffic is distributed between the master units and the remote units in digital form.
Although ETHERNET technology is widely used in enterprise and telecommunication carrier networks, existing ETHERNET infrastructure has not typically been used in a shared manner for distributing digital DAS traffic among nodes of digital distributed antenna systems. That is, such existing ETHERNET infrastructure has typically not been used to distribute digital DAS traffic among nodes of a digital DAS along with other non-DAS traffic (for example, information technology (IT) traffic or ETHERNET-based radio access network (RAN) traffic).